Rubbish battery life after updating to Lollipop

I have a Sony Xperia Z1 Compact, it had Android Kitkat. I have a Sony Smartband and Lifelog installed but the Xperia always gave me good battery life, at least one day of use (surfing, texts, calls, etc). April 2015 Sony distributed the Android 5.0.2 Lollipop update. After installation I was happy, all my apps and data were safe, everything was working well. However, I found that my previously good battery life was halved! My phone needed a charge in the afternoon every day, errk!


What to do?
How could I fix this battery life problem? I searched the Web and many sites suggested the usual things like using Stamina mode, switching off WiFi, ohhhh, not very helpful. Then I read on some sites that resetting the phone should solve the problem. I was reluctant to do this of course but after trying all kinds of things, uninstalling apps, clearing cache, etc, I decided to bite the bullet and reset. Before you do the same, read on...

What I did

Google backs up my phone's apps to the cloud all the time. Great but it doesn't backup app data. I wanted to keep my Lifelog data for example. Therefore, before I reset my phone I decided to use the Backup & Restore app that Sony had pre-installed on the phone. 

Apps button
Search for Backup & Restore

In my case I backed up everything to my SD card. I removed my SD card just to be sure. You don't have to but I am a cautious kind of person ;-)

Reset Android using Settings | Backup and Reset

Once Google had finished restoring most of my apps from the cloud I decided to run the restore from 'Backup & restore'. When I did this it restored all my apps and data.

IMPORTANT: 'Backup & restore' does not allow you to select what you restore, it will restore everything.

But for me, this was no problem. In fact I am very happy now. All my data is back and my phone's battery usage is back to normal.

Other things to check

Here's something to try, just as a general tip for squeezing a bit more life out of your battery:

Settings | WiFi | three dot menu button | Advanced

Disable (turn off) Scanning always available

That should save you a little power. Of course there are many more tips for power saving but I'm sure you've already read those, just do a Google search and you'll find millions. 

Conclusion

Resetting Android Lollipop does give you 'normal' battery life again, like you had with KitKat - at least in my case it did with my Sony Xperia Z1 Compact.

I hope by explaining my experience I've been able to help you. Resetting your phone is a bit of a pain but it isn't the end of the world. You can save your data, you can restore and you can have a phone that lasts at least a day.

However, there is one thing that still niggles me. Stamina mode doesn't like Lifelog. Therefore I have to force Lifelog to stop in order that Stamina mode works. Even if I exclude Lifelog from Stamina, it still complains. Hopefully Sony will fix this soon or if I find a solution I'll write an article of course :-)